Chilton pretty much spoils you for Halloween. I still cherish memories of Trick or Treating down Breed Street, knocking on the doors of every neighbor, all the way down to Gravesville. The Compton of our times. Not once did I have to worry about poisoned candy or razorblades in candy apples. None of us did.

Lately I’ve been perusing the Chilton Times-Journal and I’m relieved to find that Chilton remains pretty much free of crime, although I was alarmed to discover that sometime in the early hours of September 10th. someone boosted a heifer calf that was 60% white and 40% black (Color not race.). While I appreciate the description, do they really think anyone's going to spot this "hot" cow on their way to the Dairy Queen? Just walking down Main Street. What kind of person steals a cow? And what do you do with a stolen cow? Put a shirt and shoes on it and take it bowling? I mean, how lonely do you have to be to abduct a cow? A baby cow at that. Now that’s a photo that really belongs on a milk carton! These are issues we never, ever deal with in L.A. Unfortunately. I’ve heard from the grapevine that local law enforcement officials have captured the cow kidnappers. Someone told me that Homeland Security had to get involved.

I also read in someone else's blog that Mary Freeman and her children received a new home from Habitat for Humanity built on Breed Street. That’s the very street my family lived on throughout my formative years in Chilton. A house owned by my dad’s boss, Chilton Metal Products was perched high atop Breed Street. (Due to acute shyness I never really did much breeding on that street.) Our home overlooked Nolan’s florist shop down the hill and next to Highway 57, a two lane country road entering our town from the north. Years later, after I had taken to cross country hitchhiking, a Dairy Queen was built across from Nolan's. First a single traffic light downtown and then a Dairy Queen. Progress in Chilton.  While I was growing up we only had the A&W which was clear across town. That was where I first saw a waitress on roller-skates.

Chilton Metal Products decided to tear down our house after my family moved to Appleton. I was in the Air Force at the time but I heard later a local minister actually salted the earth. Three of the four homes I grew up in have been razed. Is someone trying to tell me something? I loved that house on Breed Street, even though the pipes would freeze up in winter. We had to pack straw bales around the water pump. I didn’t care. I had a major crush on May Kay Keuler who lived right across the street. I never had the courage to tell her. Not to this day. So Mary Freeman, if Habitat for Humanity built your home on that same hill where I grew up, could you do me a favor and walk across the street and find out what Mary Kay is up to these days?

Just about everyone in L.A. came from somewhere else. Some from Mexico. Others from Central America. Russia. Afghanistan. A lot of Iranians. I came from Chilton, Wisconsin. The one common trait we all share is a homesickness; especially around the holidays. Halloween is no different. While I always miss snow at Christmas time Halloween leaves me with cherished memories of hayrides through farmer’s fields looking for that perfect pumpkin. The air was cold and crisp and the candy apples the best I’ve ever had.

Sure, we have Halloween out here in L.A. but nobody would go Trick or Treating without a bulletproof vest. Most parents in L.A. never take their kids Trick or Treating on city streets but rather to the malls where the children walk from store to store never breathing the outdoor air. It’s Halloween, L.A. style.

Los Angeles store owners post signs the day before Halloween expressly forbidding customers to enter their store on Halloween wearing a mask. Considering L.A. is the bank robbery capital of the world you can understand why a mask-wearing customer is rarely welcome, even if it is Halloween. A number of years ago, on a Halloween afternoon, I was driving my retired police motorcycle (I discovered quickly that L.A. drivers only looked out for motorcycles if a cop was driving one.) in the exclusive neighborhood of Westwood Village, a couple of blocks from UCLA, when I noticed a man just down the street trying to crawl through the open passenger window of a slow-moving car heading towards me.

At first I thought that the car had started off without him and he was trying to crawl into the car to stop it. Then as I finally pulled up next to the car and could see for the first time there was a driver behind the wheel, the distinct crack of a 9-millimeter caught my attention. (After living in L.A. for awhile you learn to distinguish quickly between a 9mm and a .45.) I looked down the street to see a bank guard shooting into the back of the car I was now standing next to! This almost never happens to me in Chilton.

The driver started to speed away from me with the passenger’s legs still frantically dangling out the window. The guard, thinking I was a cop, asked me to pursue the car. I asked him if they had guns. When he nodded, "Yes" I decided it was probably not in my best interest and drove in the opposite direction. Weird things like this have always happened to me. Only not in Chilton. I miss the communal sanity that exists back home in Wisconsin. Halloween’s never been the same out here. Nothing is. Don’t even get me started on Christmas in 85-degree weather!

They say there’s nothing like Christmas with children around but I say the same goes for Halloween. The kids don’t even have to be your own. My son, Tyson Neuhoff, grew up and Trick or Treated in Two Rivers, Manitowoc, Seattle, Los Angeles and Vancouver, British Columbia. Seattle and Vancouver were unique in that you had to find a way to incorporate an umbrella into your costume motif. The rain was cold that time of the year in the Northwest but at least it was still safe to walk with your kids through any neighborhood. When I was working as a Frederick & Nelson Santa Claus in Seattle, I would take my 5-year-old son, Tyson, to work with me. He strolled freely through the mall without any fear of being abducted. He was an adventurer even at that age. I’m hoping that it’s still the same after all these years but big cities rarely become safer. Probably not much different for even the small towns.

Most people consider Thanksgiving to be the threshold of the holiday season. For me it’s Halloween. Was there ever a better sound than children laughing as they compare how much candy each one had in their bags? Now I have a four year old granddaughter, Angel, to take Trick or Treating through the malls. Two years ago she dressed as an angel and I couldn’t help but think her name was so appropriate. This past Halloween Angel dressed as Sleeping Beauty. I carry photos in my wallet of my granddaughter in both costumes. Lots of photos. But none of my son. I don't know if that makes me a great grandpa or a bad dad.

Kids are truly God's gift to us. You should see the smile on my son’s face when his daughter giggles. No matter how depressed I might be at the moment, the laughter of children always brings my spirits up. Especially my granddaughter’s infectious laugh. I hope that the community you live in is the best place to bring up your children. Even if they’re not yours. You live in a world where Halloween is still for children of all ages. Go Trick or Treating with the kids and if you don’t know any kids go by yourself. Enjoy the moment and know that throughout your life, no matter where you might move to, you will indeed cherish memories of Halloween. Although I live in L.A., I will always embrace those memories of my life back in Wisconsin. My body is in L.A. but my heart is truly in Chilton. Those of you out there who grew up somewhere else know what I'm talking about.

From all of us at

               Hollywood Daze

including those who don't speak English.........

  Happy Halloween!

For more comical info on the writer of this blog go to:  WorldHumour.bravehost.com

Tom Neuhoff
World Humour
"Funnier Than You"

Hollywood Daze/Blogger

Hollywood Daze/Yahoo 360

Western Costume Company

It's September in L.A. and I'm sitting down to write my first blog.

Hollywood Daze chronicles my life out here trying to make it in show business. Through more than 400 jobs and two ex-wives. The rejection, humiliation and failure. And that's just the first marriage! I graduated from Chilton High School way back before personal computers and palm pilots. Back when you didn’t have to take out another mortgage to fill up your SUV. You didn’t have to sell a kidney to pay for a movie ticket and popcorn. That’s just how old I am. Growing up in  Chilton, Wisconsin  was very much like working as an extra on "Happy Days" without Food Service. It was a world free of drugs and terrorism. Okay, we did have this bully who pretty much terrorized anyone under 140 lbs. which, unfortunately, included me right through my senior year at CHS. I am trying to remember his name now but if I have any problems I’m sure Wisconsin’s Department of Corrections can help me. I heard they have an absolutely delightful web site.

My high school diploma had only three weeks of dust on it when I first took off cross country hitchhiking. Chicago was my first stop where I spent a month working as an elevator operator at the YMCA hotel in The Loop. For a small town Wisconsin kid who had never seen a gay or transvestite, that job was quite an eye-opener. All while growing up in Chilton I envied the kids in Los Angeles because they had both the beaches and Disneyland. It wasn’t until years later that I learned they envied me for my after-school rabbit hunting trips in a small, secluded forest near Gravesville. The closest an L.A. kid could get to rabbit hunting was firing off a few rounds from their 9 mm clip at the big rats dancing in the alley’s moonlight. It really is true what they say about the grass looking greener.

It was the summer of 1969 and I was hitchhiking somewhere around Oklahoma when I stepped into a van of hippies and fellow cross-country hitchhikers. They invited me to an outdoor rock concert in New York. I laughed at the notion of actually heading east when even I knew all the cool beaches and Disneyland were west! Besides I grew up in a small farming town in Wisconsin so why would I want to hitchhike to another small farming town in New York? I left them somewhere on an interstate highway eager to see the beaches of California while the rest of the van headed east towards Woodstock. I couldn’t help but laugh at their folly as the van disappeared down the interstate.

Sometimes we meet people who change our lives dramatically. Even now I can look back and remember those pivotal moments when someone else influenced the direction of my life. Of my dreams. Right up until my sophomore year at Chilton High School I wanted to be a biologist. Preferably what was called then, an ecologist. A biologist who spends most of their day in the woods studying the habits of wildlife. That was long before people thought of ecology as using biodegradable products and recycling aluminum cans. Since I always loved hunting and tracking I was certain ecology was my destiny. Then I walked into my sophomore English room for the first time and saw the most beautiful blond that has ever walked the face of the Earth. Ask any of the guys back then and they’ll all tell you the same thing. Mrs. Rybicke had entered my life and ecology had left it just as quickly. Now I was in love with the arts, especially writing. Mrs. Rybicke was destined to be the best teacher I would ever have. Even if she didn't have Betty Grable legs.

They say the President of the United States is the powerful person in the world. He’s not. They say doctors are the most important people around. They’re not. Teachers are by far the most powerful and influential people in any society. Without overstating it, they’re simply vital to the future of civilization. They are our future. Yet how many times do we cut school spending and pay them less than your apprentice plumber? Look back at your own lives. Who really did more for you than your teachers? Of course you Wisconsinites are smarter than we Californians when it comes to appreciating teachers. My friend, Karen Hartley, has been teaching in Oshkosh for 30 years and I can tell you she has been compensated far better there than if she had taught in L.A. Out here an usher at a movie theater gets paid better than a teacher.

So this is the first post in a blog of my experiences chasing that elusive carrot of show business success in Hollywood. In further blogs I will tell you about the near-successes and the misses. So often we hear of a celebrities success stories but what of those failures that make up our character? I’ll tell you about my stint on "The Dating Game" as Biff Nerd, a character I was doing in my standup comedy routine at the time. I won a week’s vacation in Bogota, Colombia. I'll even expand on my most recent experiences including writing a comic strip in the July issue of Larry Flynt’s "Hustler Humor" magazine. (More to come if I can find a good illustrator.)

There was so much to learn about life in Hollywood and this insane world of show business and I’m not through yet.

This is life in Hollywood.

This is

             Hollywood Daze

For more comical info on the writer of this blog go to:  WorldHumour.bravehost.com

Tom Neuhoff
World Humour
"Funnier Than You"

Hollywood Daze/Blogger

Hollywood Daze/Yahoo 360

Chilton, Wisconsin